Your ideas are hugely valuable.

--S.B., Orinda, CA, novelist

“The endeavor of writing can be long and lonely. Mary Carroll Moore, master writing instructor, to the rescue! Moore packs How to Plan, Write, and Develop a Book with years of gritty good sense and big-picture perspective. Her techniques for drafting, organizing, and polishing a book are practical and time-tested. Here is a first-time book-writer’s best companion.”

--Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew,author of Writing the Sacred Journey: The Art and Practice of Spiritual Memoir

If I could implement all I've learned from you, I'd have a best-seller!

Pretend you’re a reporter for the New York Times. You’re going to interview your book idea.

List some questions you’d love to ask your book about its form, content, goals. You can start with something nonthreatening, as you would if you were a real reporter.

Ask your book some very good questions. Some ideas from my class are below, or you can make up your own:

What do you want to tell me about yourself?What form suits you best?Who is your readership and how will theyaccess you?What are you most eager to say?What are you most afraid to say?What genre are you?

When it runs out of things to say (or you getnervous about the answers) ask a different question.

The goal of this book-writing exercise is to surprise yourself. You’ll tap the hidden parts of yourself as a writer, the parts we often censor. You can strike gold--if you maintain the attitude of no-assumptions and anything can happen.

Books for the Blocked--These'll Get You Moving Again!

Escaping into the Open by Elizabeth Berg

Listen to Me by Lynn Lauber

Marry Your Muse by Jan Phillips

Pencil Dancing by Mari Messer

The Art of Slow Writing by Louise DeSalvo

Thinking about Memoir by Abigail Thomas

Write Your Heart Out by Rebecca McClanahan

A person’s life purpose is nothing more than to rediscover, through the detours of art, or love, or passionate work, those one or two images in the presence of which his heart first opened.Albert Camus

Sunday, May 16, 2010

It's gardening time in New England--despite the 20 degree weather we had last week that left my kale seedlings gasping--and I'm spending a lot of time out there. Soon my weekly teaching schedule will pick up again, leaving me little time to sit in the sun, so I'm getting my fingernails filthy now.

Gardening for me is a lot like writing. Both take tons of practice, trial and error, failure and misery. Both have some magnificent moments. If you're not into gardening, forgive this analogy, but for me plants and soil have taught me a lot about the practice of writing. The patience I need, the forgiveness of my own big bloopers, the times when I want to chuck it all and go work at McDonalds (not really).

I began gardening because three of my grandparents had the bug. My grandfather lived in Nyack, NY, right on the Hudson and he grew raspberry bushes and roses in a boxwood maze and flowers I could never hope to identify. We were both early risers. When I would visit, I could peer out my dormer window from bed and see him walking in the garden, so I'd get dressed fast and go out to join him. The raspberries were his precious spot. He pondered them like I ponder a chapter, scene, character.

My grandfather taught me to go slow with creating. It worked well to put in time, both fingernail filthy time (digging into the soil, feeling it, working it with your hands) and pondering time.

So that leads us to this week's topic: practice. Does it really make writing perfect? How does it contribute to real writing goals?

Practice--Becoming an Outlier
I went to my local library last week to catch up on reading. So many books on my list--and I sometimes find one on CD so I can listen in the car. I got a copy of Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, a book that's been on the list for a while.

I admire Gladwell's ability with potentially dry subjects. He took the evolution of Hush Puppies and made it fascinating in his well-known book, The Tipping Point. Outliers is about the phenomenon of success. What makes it works for some people, not for others.Even though they are equally brilliant, innovative, and determined.

Since I teach writers, and I see some succeed with their writing projects, while others do not, I'm interested in this. Gladwell's research is pretty thorough. So far, the book has listed two aspects of success.

One is coming from an environment that allows it--with time, resources, and mentors. A person who succeeds in their art, craft, sport, business, academic endeavors, has certain support systems naturally. A writer like J.K. Rowlings (Harry Potter books) is an exception (the folklore is that Rowlings crammed her writing between childcare, without any private writing space to speak of). So the first question is whether you have the system in place to support your writing project.

The second important aspect is practice. Gladwell cites 10,000 hours as the time it takes someone to get good at something. He gave a study of violinists who all started out as child prodigies; some became virtuosos and others didn't. Why? The researchers divided the violinists into three groups. The top group all had practiced a LOT more than the others. That was the only documentable difference.

So the second question is to ask yourself how much you practice your craft. How much do you allow yourself to just write.

Figure Out Where You Already Practice A Lot
Your passions will lead you naturally toward practice of the things you really love. And it'll also create space and support for these things you love. I know a woman who grows delphiniums. They aren't an easy plant in the north. She spends about fifty times more practice on her delphiniums than her writing. For her, it's a no-brainer. She really loves those plants, and it shows. By midsummer, she's created an awesome garden that gives a lift to everyone who drives or walks past.

Putting any small additional time, space, support into her creative life is much harder for her. Why? She hasn't gotten the love back from it in a long time. Those spiky purple flowers really give her back plenty of love, so it's easy to pour more of herself toward them. It isn't happening with the writing yet. So practicing her writing isn't as natural or easy. The passion isn't quite there.

When the passion leaves, the practice will be drudgery. So getting the love back means reconfiguring your approach. What is fun about the writing--do you even remember? I work with lots of writers who have lost the fun, and I recommend silly stuff. Freewrites. Writing without any Purpose. Get a copy of Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg or What If? by Pamela Painter and Anne Bernays. Do an exercise a day (short, 10 minute ones).

Get back the love. It'll help you get back to the routine of your writing practice, mostly because you'll remember again why you're doing it in the first place.

The goal is to get the routine of practice to be second-nature, just like the second-nature of caring for plants in spring, if you're a passionate gardener.
Eventually, if you're lucky, the practice will become so ingrained, it gives the love to keep itself going.

Several days this week, the birds were louder than the characters' voices in my head. I let myself drift toward peas and peonies instead of words on a page. It was like a freewrite, easier than my writing practice. I recharged with that easier love. I emailed a writing friend, my support system. I read a few poems for inspiration. I made some tea.

When I came back to the computer and tried the scene again, it was less of a battle.

This Week's Writing Exercise
1. Read Outliers, if you want. It'll both excite and challenge you.

2. Find someone who is really good at their craft. Ask this person how much time they spend on it. Compare it to how much time you spend on your writing. Write down some thoughts about what you might commit, if you could, to increase your time each week.

3. Analyze your support systems. Do you have a mentor? Do you have space and privacy to write? Do you have the proper equipment (laptop, good writing materials, books about writing)? Do you have classes and ways to get better? Write some thoughts about what might make your writing support systems stronger.

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Upcoming Writing Classes with Mary

Whether you are trying to write the story of your life for publication or as a family legacy, this class by the author of two memoirs will show you how to organize your stories into readable, interesting work. You'll be introduced to a simple formula that successful authors use to find the central conflict of their story, then plan, organize, and write scenes and chapters around it. We'll explore the value of themes, how action and reflection balance one another in memoir and creative nonfiction, and authorial voice versus narrative voice. $105. Click here for details or to register.Writing RetreatsYour Book Starts Here: Week-long Writing Retreat July 30-August 3, Madeline Island School of the Arts, Lake Superior Five days of workshop, personal coaching, and plenty of time to work on your book in our great community of book writers at all stages, working in all genres, on gorgeous Madeline Island off the coast of northern Wisconsin. This retreat will become a highlight of your summer. Great meals and lodging on campus. $775. Click here for details.

Independent Study for Book Writers July 30-August 3, Madeline Island School of the Arts, Lake Superior Craving time, quiet, and a wonderful space to finally get working (or finishing) your book? But enough support each day, plus community, to do it sanely and safely? Five days of personal coaching, plenty of time to write, and optional workshops to attend make this independent study week productive, creative bliss. Great meals and lodging on campus. $775. Click here for details.

A Little about Me . . .

Mary Carroll Moore is an award-winning, internationally published author of thirteen books in three genres, writing teacher, editor and book doctor for publishing houses. For thirty years she's helped thousands of new and experienced writers plan, write, and develop--and publish!--their books. Photo by Bruce Fuller Photography.

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If you believe you have a book inside you just waiting to come out, here is a guide that will ensure your book’s arrival in the world. In clear, accessible prose, Mary Carroll Moore leads the aspiring author through every step of the challenging, rewarding process of developing and completing a full-length book.

--Rebecca McClanahan, author of Word Painting

Encouraging Words--Well-Known Writers with Large Number of Rejections--But Published!

Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo--397 rejections (and it became a movie)A Wrinkle in Timeby Madeleine L'Engle--97 rejections (and it won the Newbery Medal for best children's book of 1963; it's now in its 69th printing)Cinder Edna by Ellen Jackson--40 rejections (and it has won multiple awards and sold 150,000 hard copies). Judy Blume says she received "nothing but rejections" for 2 years.Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot--17 rejectionsHarry Potter novels by J.K. Rowling--rejected by 9 publishersThe Diary of Anne Frank--16 rejections (and now more than 30 million copies are in print)Dr. Seuss books--more than 15 rejectionsJonathan Livingston Seagullby Richard Bach--140 rejectionsGone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell--38 rejectionsWatership Down by Richard Adams--26 rejectionsDune by Frank Herbert--nearly 20 rejections

To all book writers: Believe in your story. Keep trying. The right home for your book is out there, waiting for you to discover it.

Want to get the creative brain going?

Book writers (and any writers) need to know how to engage the creative right brain that "writes" in images. Think of any wonderful book that's left you swimming in a setting or characters--the writer has successfully used the image-creating part of the brain. But our normal workaday lives short-circuit this part. Check out this cool video of Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, a brain scientist at Harvard Medical School, recounting her personal experience of a left-brain stroke and her awakening to right-brain reality. Pretty amazing fusion of brain science with what it feels like to a brain scientist having a stroke:http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/229

Flying Squirrels Bring Creative Jolt to Novelist

Flying squirrel gets into house--disrupts routine, gets novelist thinking differently. This happened to me! For two days, as I chased the squirrel (actually, it was all night since they are nocturnal), I slept very little. And got many new ideas for my novel-in-progress.Go figure!Maybe...book writers need creative jolts? Routine dulls our imaginations? How has an unexpected interruption actually been a gift for your creativity this week?

At the Loft Literary Center, I can always tell which students in my classes have taken Mary Carroll Moore’s class on book-writing. They talk about writing their book in "islands" and using storyboards to figure out how those sections relate to each other. When another student confesses to feeling overwhelmed by the material her memoir might include, they readily advise, “You should try Mary Carroll Moore’s method.” I second that.--Cheri Register, author of Packinghouse Daughter and American Book Award winner

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